He could cite the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962 and the 1972 break-in of Democratic National Committee offices in the Watergate Hotel in Washington, D.C., which ultimately forced Richard Nixon to resign the presidency two years later.

But after completing University of Wisconsin Marathon County Professor Brett Barker’s spring semester course, “U.S. History through Film,” the second-year student from Weston said he has a greater appreciation for this period, which began at the end of World War II and concluded with the removal of the Berlin Wall in 1989.

“Right after the war, it was the first time in world and U.S. history where things really got weird,” said Merkel, who will continue his education at UW-Stevens Point in the fall and plans to teach high school-level history.

“The two biggest bullies on the block, the US and the USSR, both had nuclear weapons, changing the way people thought,” Merkel said. “There was a whole mind shift, as people wondered: ‘What’s going to happen tomorrow?”

Barker has taught “US. History through Film” two other semesters during his 16 years at UW Marathon County. What makes the class captivating for students is the use of 14 movies, many of them Academy Award winners, to complement the course textbook.

For example:

► To emphasize the start of the Cold War and the early 1950s anti-communist fervor taking hold in the United States, much of it fueled by Wisconsin Sen. Joe McCarthy, Barker shows “Good Night, and Good Luck,” a 2005 drama directed by and starring George Clooney.

► After watching Oliver Stone’s “Platoon,” Barker hopes students relate to the fears, dangers and life-and-death decisions U.S. soldiers faced while fighting the North Vietnamese in the 1960s and ‘70s.

Other movies shown in the class include: “All the President’s Men,” “The Graduate,” “Malcolm X,” “North by Northwest, and “Duck and Cover,” a 1950s civil defense training film that was shown to elementary school students throughout the U.S., instructing them how and where to seek shelter during an atomic bomb explosion.

The course’s cinematic mix appealed to Sarah Kafka, who did not like learning history until enrolling in Barker’s course. She earned her associate degree from UWMC in May and will transfer to UW-Madison in the fall to pursue a double major in journalism and English.

“I was never good with names and remembering dates. Memorizing the Bill of Rights is dry,” said Kafka, who grew up on a dairy farm near Athens and was homeschooled prior to college. “I identify more by watching stuff, so the movies make it more personal and easier to see and understand what people went through at the time.”

Brett Barker, shown in December 2016, has recently used Academy Award-winning films to get students more interested in Cold War era events.(Photo: Courtesy of Patrick Flood Photography)

Barker said his main objective in all courses is to get students to grasp what “everyday people” were experiencing at the time.

“Peoples’ ordinary lives can be part of history,” he said. “What’s important about the life of a middle-class person in the U.S. during the re-industrialization of 1970s and ‘80s? Why were Wisconsin dairy farmers dumping their milk in 1967?”

In addition to showing thematic films, Barker tapped into the experiences of 11 older students who did not take the class for credit or grade. Called “auditors,” the 60-year-old or older Wisconsin residents can enroll in University of Wisconsin courses for free.

“Auditors lend such a valuable perspective to the course that traditional students wouldn’t get otherwise,” Barker said.

As part of a research project, Barker also required the 28 students taking the course for credit toward two-year degrees to interview someone living during the Cold War and write a report on how the events of the time may have affected the person’s life and beliefs. Merkel and Kafka turned to auditor classmates.

Merkel questioned Tom McGrath, 75, who grew up in Milwaukee and enlisted in the U.S. Navy in 1963. Based out of Norfolk, Va., McGrath served on the USS Laffey, a World War II destroyer, as an electronics technician until 1967, when he left the service.

“Overall, I had a positive experience in the Navy,” McGrath said. “The 38-week electronics school I went to in San Francisco was the equivalent of three years of college-level electrical engineering training. I saw 22 countries, including the Virgin Islands, Italy, Greece, Spain and Turkey. Although a Russian MIG buzzed our ship off the east coast of Africa, we weren’t involved in any conflicts, and I got out of the Navy when my ship was about to be sent to Vietnam. ”

Kafka interviewed Gretchen Egan, 68, who grew up in Wausau and was editor of UWMC’s student newspaper, The Forum, in 1967, before completing her English education degree at UW-Madison. During her career, Egan worked as a reporter at the Wisconsin State Journal and taught journalism and English at Wausau East High School for 20 years before retiring in 2012.

The Vietnam War, American politics and the civil rights movement were among regular dinnertime discussions at the Egan household while she was growing up.

“Our parents wanted us to know what was going on in the world,” said Egan, whose father, Win Freund, served in the U.S. Army in World War II as an assistant to General Omar Bradley and worked as a reporter for the Wausau Daily Herald after the war. “They were voracious readers. Each day, besides the Herald, they read the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and the Milwaukee Journal.”

“I wasn’t alive during the Cold War so having somebody in class share what they lived through then gave me a better idea of what the average person thought about Joe McCarthy, Watergate and other Cold War events,” Merkel said.

“The Cold War was much more than Russia and the U.S. wanting to nuke each other,” Kafka said. “It also was about civil rights and women’s liberation, so it was nice to have people in class who lived through those times and could share their experiences.”

Story by Brian Becker, director of communications for UW Colleges North Region.